What do you think of this partial-mash scheme?

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cweston

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I have a 3 gallon picnic water cooler thingy with a spigot.

If I used a grain bag and rigged some sort of false-bottom to hold it off the bottom of the cooler, the cooler could function as both mash-tun (for a single infusion) and lauter-tun. I could even do a protien rest on the stove and then raise the temp before dumping it into the cooler.

I'd use some sort of hose clamp to restrict the flow out of the cooler during sparging.

I'm cheap, so I really want to try partial mashing without buying any expensive gear first. But if I can get some good results from partial mashes and then point out to SWMBO how much cheaper grain is than extracts...
 
I've been giving this some thought recently too. I'd like to improve my partial mash/sparge technique but with minimal investment. To date I've just been pouring my sparge water over the grain and I don't think I've been very efficient this way. I don't mind buying a cooler and maybe a false bottom, but don't want to have to get two coolers, sparge arm, flow controls, etc.

Have you considered trying a batch sparge first instead of continuous? At least that would allow you to avoid having to control the inflow and outflow. Thing is, I don't know if you would use the same ratio of water-to-grain for partial as you would for AG.
 
For one thing, blow off the protein rest. It's your first mash so go simple. Single infusion at 150 degrees all in the cooler. I have brewed thousands of all-grain batches and the vast majority of my batches are single infusion. You really don't want to mess around with applying heat directly to the mash on the stove. If you feel for some reason you MUST do a protein rest (and I'm telling you...it won't make a bit of difference), then do a two step infusion. Add water to bring your cooler to 120 and then add enough boiling water to bring it to 150. I never apply heat directly to grain except in more complicated brews outside the scope of this discussion.

Second, almost all mash tuns are also lauter tuns, so you're on the right track.

Third, sparge arms are cheap and you should build or buy something to deliver the water very gently to the sparge. I like Phil's Sparge arm. You'll need to come up with something other than just ladling water into it if you want good efficiency.

Fourth, I'd get a vlave instead of using a hose clamp to restrict flow, but no matter how you go, the flow needs to be VERY slow if you want decent efficiency.

Last, good luck convincing your wife that all-grain is cheaper. It isn't unless all the equipment is free and once you get into it, you'll be buying lots of equipment for a long time. It's one of those things that isn't fun and doesn't produce great results if you do it half-assed.

Your setup sounds good overall. I strongly recommend doing a really simple single infusion mash. You can't go wrong that way. Cheers :D
 
ESPY said:
I don't mind buying a cooler and maybe a false bottom, but don't want to have to get two coolers, sparge arm, flow controls, etc.

You're only shortchanging yourself ;)

Seriously, another cooler and a sparge arm is, what, $30 tops?? You don't need flow controls other than a valve on your liquor tank and mash tun to control in and outflow.

If you want to brew budget, brew extract. All-grain really won't produce good results if you try to shortchange the process. Good luck! :D
 
Janx said:
If you want to brew budget, brew extract. All-grain really won't produce good results if you try to shortchange the process. Good luck! :D

i don't know, with the exception of a large SS pot it's not that much of an investment in equipemnt unless youre the high tech type and want a three tier RIMS system or something ridiculous like that. my mash/lauter-tun cost me around $15 total (I got the cooler for a dollar though), which i've already paid off with the savings in grain after only a few AG batches. And they are ALL excellent brews, better than any extract batch i've done. I do batch sparge though, so a sparge arm is not included in that, but i might get one once I've got batch sparging down. first things first though- i need a wort chiller.
 
Janx said:
You're only shortchanging yourself ;)

Seriously, another cooler and a sparge arm is, what, $30 tops?? You don't need flow controls other than a valve on your liquor tank and mash tun to control in and outflow.

If you want to brew budget, brew extract. All-grain really won't produce good results if you try to shortchange the process. Good luck! :D

Thanks for the good tips. Of course, I know that the fact that grain is cheaper than extract is not terribly relevant, but somehow capital investments (gear) seem like money better spent than ingrediants that just get brewed up and consumed. My wife seems to view the equipment costs as the "hobby expense" (= good) and the ingrediant costs as the "I can't believe how much you spend on beer" (= bad) expense.

I mostly just want to be able to try partial mashing without much up-front investment. I'm sure I'll eventually graduate to a full-fledged all-grain system.
 
drengel - how do you brew without a chiller??? Essential piece of equipment. You can build a counterflow chiller pretty cheaply...immersion even cheaper.
 
i'll be building one within the next few weeks. immersion most likely as all the wasted water from a counterflow chiller doesn't really jive with my environmental ethos. especially not considering i live in a high desert environ thats in the middle of a drought. To tell you the truth it sucks brewing without a chiller. When doing partial boils it was OK, I have a industrial sink thats large enough to put a big pot in and fill with water and ice. with that it took about 30 minutes to chill. It just doesn't work so well with a full boil though, especially not when you've been brewing for hours already. you just want it to cool fast. I never realized how awsesome a wort chiller was until i saw one in action the other day. I'm in a bioichem of fermentation class and we brewed a dunkel in class, my teacher brought in his chiller and we had the whole batch chilled in 15 minutes. I was amazed, and now I'm working on building one.
 
Janx, what do you think about cweston trying batch sparging first? Isn't that easier and simpler to set up than continuous sparge?

Janx said:
Seriously, another cooler and a sparge arm is, what, $30 tops?? You don't need flow controls other than a valve on your liquor tank and mash tun to control in and outflow.

If you want to brew budget, brew extract. All-grain really won't produce good results if you try to shortchange the process. Good luck! :D

I'm only doing partial mash. If I were ready to make the leap to AG, I would certainly see the benefit in getting all the right equipment. But so far I've been pretty happy with partial mash and would just like to try to find ways to improve my technique a bit. It was you that suggested last week that I'm sparging way too quickly. So I'd prefer to try it a couple different ways with a minimal setup before committing to a full setup. I was thinking that I could stick to just a cooler, false bottom and batch sparging first and see how that turns out.
 
drengel said:
i'll be building one within the next few weeks. immersion most likely as all the wasted water from a counterflow chiller doesn't really jive with my environmental ethos. especially not considering i live in a high desert environ thats in the middle of a drought. To tell you the truth it sucks brewing without a chiller. When doing partial boils it was OK, I have a industrial sink thats large enough to put a big pot in and fill with water and ice. with that it took about 30 minutes to chill. It just doesn't work so well with a full boil though, especially not when you've been brewing for hours already. you just want it to cool fast. I never realized how awsesome a wort chiller was until i saw one in action the other day. I'm in a bioichem of fermentation class and we brewed a dunkel in class, my teacher brought in his chiller and we had the whole batch chilled in 15 minutes. I was amazed, and now I'm working on building one.

Hmm...I'm pretty sure that counterflow uses less water, especially in anything above 5 gallons. The most efficient chiller water-wise is a plate chiller. I'm with you, BTW. I always try to use all my chiller water. I clean with it or fill the dogs' baby pool in the summer.
 
ESPY said:
Janx, what do you think about cweston trying batch sparging first? Isn't that easier and simpler to set up than continuous sparge?

Hmm...I guess...do you mean because you don't necessarily need a hot liquor tank? But you do need some vessel to heat sparge water, right?

I don't know where batch sparging really saves you except maybe on a sparge arm? But for years, I used a loop of vinyl hose with holes punched in it. Cost about $.10 Not as nice as the Phil's Sparge Arm but it did OK.

I'm curious and I know I must be missing something because I've always done the regular kind of continuous sparging. How is setting up batch sparging easier?
 
Janx said:
Hmm...I'm pretty sure that counterflow uses less water, especially in anything above 5 gallons. The most efficient chiller water-wise is a plate chiller. I'm with you, BTW. I always try to use all my chiller water. I clean with it or fill the dogs' baby pool in the summer.

i'm glad i'm not the only one who has a kiddie pool for the dog.

i thought the counterflow ones were where you run water through a hose with a copper piping full of the beer in it. where does the water go. (i don't know the specifics of how they work nor have i ever seen one.) the amount of ice my teacher used to fill the 5 gallon bucket that the piping ran through seems about the equivalent of what goes in my sink but with much better results. ( a bag or two)
 
1) I would think a CFC would use way less water than an immersion chiller, but as I have an immersion chiller I'm just guessing. The CFC is supposed to work faster, so it makes sense to me.

ii) In the first poster's case, I would do a "no sparge". Let things mash for an hour at 150-155 and then dump in whatever amount of sparge water is calculated to be needed (probably around 180F or so to raise the temp of the entire mash to 168-170F), and then drain the whole thing off. Done.
 
drengel said:
where does the water go.
Same place as for an immersion chiller...down the drain/sewer. Actually, I do collect the first 5g of water into a kettle and use it for cleanup since it's nice and hot/warm. But generally speaking neither one of those systems uses recirculating water as the outflow is typically quite hot.
 
Janx said:
Hmm...I guess...do you mean because you don't necessarily need a hot liquor tank? But you do need some vessel to heat sparge water, right?

How is setting up batch sparging easier?

By no means am I an expert, I'm just going off what I've read online over the past couple days. But it seems to be a little simpler both in terms of equipment and technique.

1) Don't need hot liquor tank that maintains 170° sparge temp. Yes, you need something to heat the water to temp, but for partial mash we're talking about water volume that you can heat with any regular stove pot.

2) Don't need sparge arm

3) Don't have to monitor both inflow and outflow, no concern for channeling

4) Slightly less efficient conversion than continuous, but you won't over sparge and get excess things you don't want.

So a bit more advanced than what I'm doing -- just rinsing my grain bag with water -- but not quite as involved as continuous. Hard part will be figuring the right amount of sparge water for a partial mash.
 
Yeah you have to dispose of the heat somehow. The best thing to do is collect the water an use it for the strike water for your next batch...but that's a slippery slope ;)

I think that given the same temperature of water, counterflow chillers use less water. There are factors. Immersion chillers are more efficient with smaller batches. And the hose diameter and length makes a big difference with counterflow.

How did the ice factor into your use of the immersion chiller?

Of course, ice takes energy to create, so it's really just a different way of moving energy/heat around. There's no free lunch. But using ice and an immersion chiller may save water in your case...I'm just not clear how you use the ice. You could probably do the same with a counterflow chiller.

But a plate chiller is definitely the most efficient...I intend to get one someday. morebeer.com has an affordable one.
 
ESPY said:
By no means am I an expert, I'm just going off what I've read online over the past couple days. But it seems to be a little simpler both in terms of equipment and technique.

OK. I'll address these based on my experience...take it for what it's worth.

ESPY said:
1) Don't need hot liquor tank that maintains 170° sparge temp. Yes, you need something to heat the water to temp, but for partial mash we're talking about water volume that you can heat with any regular stove pot.

You really don't need to worry much about the 170 degree thing. I don't. I heat it up to that general area, but you can sparge with water anywhere from 150-180 and really even wider range with no ill effects. So, you could still heat it on your stove and gently ladle the water in (though a simple bucket with a hose and sparge arm would work better.)

ESPY said:
2) Don't need sparge arm

Sparge arm is seriously no big deal. You can buy a fancy one for about $10 or make a perfectly workable one for under a dollar. Certainly worth it to make your beer better when it takes 5 hours to brew a batch.

ESPY said:
3) Don't have to monitor both inflow and outflow, no concern for channeling

You would still want to monitor the outflow speed. Draining it very quickly will have very poor yields. Slower is better even with batch.

ESPY said:
4) Slightly less efficient conversion than continuous, but you won't over sparge and get excess things you don't want.

This is one of those things that the books make you worry about, but it isn't actually a factor. You'll never really get any flavors you don't want from oversparging. You'd have to go really out of your way to do so, and in real life it just doesn't happen. You just run the sparge until it doesn't taste sweet. Then you stop it. Maybe I should write a book...the simple way to brew beer without worrying about needless details...maybe a shorter title. ;)

I think, in general, you have been led to believe that continuous sparging is more difficult than it really is. There doesn't seem to be much difference to me other than you drain the entire mash before adding more water in batch sparging. It doesn't seem easier, really, and I think you'd actually have more trouble keeping the mash hot if you drain it all.

It seems to me that many of the issues are exactly the same in terms of producing good results. Six in one half dozen the other.

Cheers :D
 
Janx said:
Slower is better even with batch.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with this. I've tried it both way without any differences noted. With a batch you essentially stir all the sugar into solution that you're going to get into solution and create a wort of equal SG throughout the entire mash. So there's no 'SG gradient' sucking sugar out of the grain in a batch sparge like there is in a fly/continuous sparge. I drain my batch sparge with my drain valve wide open, as do most other batch spargers I've spoken with.
 
Janx said:
It seems to me that many of the issues are exactly the same in terms of producing good results. Six in one half dozen the other.

Cheers :D

I guess that's my thought too. Why spend the excess $$ if I can make a simpler setup work. I'm kinda at the point where it seems foolish to spend more $$ to create an "advanced" partial mash setup when for not much more I could just go AG.

SP
 
BeeGee - right on...doesn't make sense to me, because it seems that you could do a quick sparge with continuous by stirring it all up and running it through quickly. That intuitively makes sense, but experience tells me that to get the best results, you need to go slow and not agitate the grain at all. I don't know why it would be different with batch, but I don't have the experience with that method that you do.

ESPY - I see where you're coming from and totally agree. The difference between partial and AG is minimal and mostly has to do with volume. I wouldn't sink too much effort/money into a system that can only do mini-mash because it takes as long as brewing an AG, but you still have to buy extract. I'd definitely agree that money/effort should be focused on a system that will be able to do AG, and if you're only doing mini-mashing, minimizing cost is a good idea. FWIW, one can skip the mini-mash phase of their brewing career and jump straight to AG...makes more sense to me, because other than volume, it's the same thing.

Cheers :D
 
Well mine is made... was it cheap... well... if I took out the learning experience in order to make what I have now, yeah its pretty cheap. Probably spent around $60-70ish. I screwed up one cooler... that added a $20. I kept buying fittings I thought would work... returned a bunch... bought more that I thought would work.... sadly returned some (hahahaha). Got fed up and bought some premade things that in the end work.

5 Gal Rubbermaid cooler...$20
Steel false bottom..........$25
Kewler kit.....................$27
Other fittings needed.....$10

I still have the plastic Phils false bottom that did not work. I can use it for something else I suppose.... The steel bottom will certainly last a lifetime. I have the other cooler that I pluged the hole in it that I screwed up with..... HWT.....

It wont matter when I'm drinking beer made with fresh grain :mug: and I'm guessing it wont matter to you too in the end:)
 
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